Geodesic Dome

If you have visited campus in the past 10 years you might have walked past this silver “jungle gym” and wondered: What is it? Where did it come from? And, why it is here?

The official name of this type of structure is a geodesic dome; it was made famous by 20th-century inventor and visionary R. Buckminster Fuller. At SUNY Oswego, the geodesic dome is 20 feet in diameter with 3-inch aluminum struts, and it has lived in a few places on campus—including in front of Wilber Hall—before landing in its current location in the quad between Park and Rich halls.

Oswego’s dome was erected in 2008 as part of a program called “Geodesic Structures: Build a Dome for Bucky’s Birthday.” Thirty dome builders and students came together to build the dome at the direction of 43-year SUNY Oswego faculty member and Fuller scholar, John Belt. Today, the structure continues to honor Fuller and and to inspire the creativity and innovation that goes into all design.

Exclusive Video

A close look at SUNY Oswego Professor John Belt’s Studio in 202 Park Hall

Jacqueline Michalski ’10 was a member of the women’s swimming and diving team at SUNY Oswego for four consecutive years. As a student-athlete, she became the assistant swim coach for the Lake Oswego Swim Club for two seasons. She graduated in 2010 with a Bachelor of Science in wellness management. Shortly after graduating, Michalski accepted a position as an assistant swim coach while pursuing her master’s degree in health care administration at King’s College. In 2014, she became the head coach of the Eastern Illinois University men’s and women’s swim team where she is in her fourth year.

How old were you when you started to swim competitively? What was your specialty/main event?

I joined the local USA competitive swim team, Chenango (N.Y.) Aquatics, (CAGO) in October 1992 when I was 4 years old. I was an active member of the club until 2006. The coaching philosophy of Chenango Aquatics was to encourage swimmers to swim all the strokes and events. That being said, I was a natural breaststroker and was much better suited for distance events than sprints. My favorite events were the 400 IM and 200 breaststroke, two events I regularly swam while at SUNY Oswego.

One of my favorite first memories of swimming was at the UNAC Sertoma meet held in Endicott, N.Y. I was a member of the 8 and under girls’ relay team for both the 200-free relay and 200-medley relay team. Being a natural breaststroker, 6-year-old me swam that leg of the winning relay with another 6 year old, 7 and 8 year old. The four of us still hold the record for that meet, 25 years later. It’s still a story I tell my college team when I ask them to remember why they started swimming, and who they swim for. I’m on deck every day for that little girl who fell in love with the water.

When you were looking at colleges, how important was it to you to be able to keep swimming?I knew I wanted to swim in college and continue in the footsteps that so many of my older club teammates took. My club coach was very supportive and encouraged me to pursue this goal. She would remind me that the events in college would suit me better as a swimmer, allowing me to swim longer events.

At first, how did you feel about swimming at the college level? I felt determined, but I was also nervous. My determination came from wanting to prove myself and continue the tradition of winning SUNYACs, but it didn’t come without any nerves. I had an amazing support system, including my family back home, club coaches, Coach Kami and my teammates.

I was excited to be swimming under a female head coach, but I knew she had high expectations for me. At 18 years old, I knew my path at SUNY Oswego would be a special one and create a solid foundation for the rest of my life. Now at 30 years old, I know my four years spent in Laker Hall made me into the successful coach that I am today.

What was the first moment that you felt part of the Oswego team? I felt welcome on the team from the moment I went on my recruiting trip in early October 2005. The coach at the time knew how to make an impact — the whole team was there to welcome me; they knew my name, events I swam, and took time to show me around campus. Their warm welcome, along with the instant connection I felt with the university, helped me realize Oswego was the place for me. This welcoming sensation only grew over the summer leading up to fall 2006, my freshman year.

One of my favorite memories involves swimming the 400 IM early in the season my freshman year. Usually the men and women swam in their own heats, but to save time, the men and women of Oswego ended up swimming in the same heat. My strength in the IM was the back 200 of the event (breaststroke and freestyle). The race started in usual fashion for me, lagging behind after the first leg, coming in dead last after the 100 yards of fly. I began to catch up to the field in the backstroke and pull ahead of all the females in the heat. When it came to the breaststroke leg of the race, I was set on catching up to my male teammates. One of the men from Oswego was very strong in the first 200 yards; a chance to catch him was nearly impossible at that point of the race. The other male swimmer knew me from club swimming and was aware of what I was doing. He was prepared for me to make a move and swam the race so I could catch him, but not beat him at end of the race. The third male swimmer was not aware of this, allowing me to catch him in the breaststroke and pass by him during the freestyle leg, leading me to finish before him. He was a good sport about me beating him that day but he was not going to let that happen again. From that day on, he beat me in every IM race and every IM set in practice. We grew into great training partners and great friends. The men’s and women’s team acted very much as one, always motivating and encouraging for success, despite gender.

I took this team atmosphere, which I learned from Oswego, and carried it into my daily coaching life here at EIU. The men’s and women’s teams sometimes combine practices and work together as a unit to make each other better.

When did you decide to transition your love for the sport into coaching?I was fortunate that I had the opportunity to help coach at the Chenango Aquatics while still in high school and as part of the team. During college, I helped coach the local club team in Oswego, and in the summer helped coach CAGO. I loved being on deck as well as being in the water.

I received a Bachelor’s of Science in wellness management with minors in health science and coaching. From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to have an education that would help me in my future coaching career, but it also gave me an outlet to pursue a degree outside of athletics.

After my four years, I was not sure if I would pursue coaching or go into the healthcare field. I was able to find a graduate assistant position as an assistant swim coach at King’s College and get my master’s in healthcare administration while coaching. The more time I spent on deck, the more I realized I wanted to coach and keep the sport of swimming in my life.

I started to do research on what it would take to make coaching my full-time job in the college setting. The more research I did, the more I noticed how few women were coaching at the college level across all divisions, but especially Division I. I had the same emotions I did when entering Oswego as I did when entering the world of DI athletes as a female. I was determined to be successful, but also nervous knowing not many women are in this field. I have always been motivated by “beating the boys” and knew that I wanted to be in this world at this level. I knew my time at Oswego had prepared me for entering the world of college athletics.

What was a key lesson learned at Oswego that you’ve applied to your coaching career?During my freshman year at Oswego, I was fortunate enough to be a part of a team that won SUNYAC on the women’s side. I was swimming for a strong female coach -there was great senior leadership – and I was swimming some of my best times in my life, with the women on the team doing the same thing.

My sophomore year came with a new coach, new seniors, new freshmen and a new mindset — everything seemed new, when in reality, nothing was that new. I will admit, I did not adjust well to the changes, and did not know how to adjust to the feeling of change. I struggled with the mental adjustments and I needed to realize that the most important things didn’t change. I was on a team whose mindset was still set to excellence, the coach still had a passion for the team and university, the beautiful campus, and professors were still there to encourage and guide me to success.

I experienced coaching changes as a swimmer at Oswego, as an assistant coach at Saint Francis University and as a coach here at EIU. I had a very successful freshman year, and I believe I can credit that to strong preparation in the pre-season, along with a strong coach and positive team environment. My next three years at Oswego were a very different experience, but the struggles I had my last three years, in addition to the success of my freshman year, shaped me into the coach I am today. I would not change any of my experiences I had at Oswego. The highs and lows have both served me well. I tasted what it was like to be successful, as well as fail, as a swimmer. I believe the lows have helped me become a better coach and given me insight on how to navigate coaching changes, as well as handle the difficulties one can experience both as a swimmer and a coach.

Since leaving Oswego, I have become a Division I head coach of a men’s and women’s swim teams who puts academics first and pays close attention to the highs and lows of a swimmer’s career. These values that I have instilled in our core team culture have produced a women’s team that has had the highest GPAs in the nation among DI swim programs. Both genders have also ranked within the top 20 nearly every semester. I carry the passion both my former coaches had for their school and team into my daily coaching life. They truly believed in the school, team and community. They both taught me to bring a passion for the job every day and motivate the team as a whole, as well as to encourage all swimmers individually to be the best they can.

If you could go back to your first day as a freshman showing up to Laker Pool and give yourself advice, what would it be?To take your four years of eligibility and make the most of them. Every day might not be the best day, but after four years, you can never do this again. Not many people get to say they were a student-athlete. Make the most of your time with your teammates and your coach.

Leah Landry ‘11, producer of the health and wellness radio show Take Care, interviewed Susannah Melchior Schaefer ’90 at the campus-based NPR affiliate, WRVO Public Media, in November 2017, when she returned to campus as part of the Oswego Alumni Association’s Alumni-In-Residence program. She also presented a lecture, which was sponsored by the Feinberg Family Fund, established by Robert Feinberg ’78and his wife, Robbi, to support gender equity in the workplace.

]]>http://magazine.oswego.edu/2018/04/12/smile-train-exclusive-online-content/feed/010116Students Shatter the Longest Conga Line on Ice Record LIVE on the ‘Today’ Showhttp://magazine.oswego.edu/2017/08/28/students-shatter-the-longest-conga-line-on-ice-record-live-on-the-today-show/
http://magazine.oswego.edu/2017/08/28/students-shatter-the-longest-conga-line-on-ice-record-live-on-the-today-show/#respondMon, 28 Aug 2017 19:13:16 +0000http://magazine.oswego.edu/?p=9247

More than 600 student skaters joined Al Roker ’76 on the ice in the Marano Campus Center March 31 to help break a world record live on NBC’s Today show as part of Rokerthon 3

WTOP General Manager Justin Dobrow ’17 was in the midst of planning for the biggest, most anticipated broadcast of the year—Whiteout Weekend—when he learned about a contest for college campuses to submit a one-minute video to host Rokerthon 3.

In the first Rokerthon in 2014, TV icon and Today show co-host Al Roker ’76broke a world record by doing a non-stop, 34-hour weather forecast on NBC, and in the second Rokerthon, he set another world record by broadcasting a live weather forecast from all 50 states in seven days. Rokerthon 3 asked college campuses to make a video that showed off their “epic” school spirit, invited Roker to do a live weather forecast from their campus and described the world record the school would like to break during his visit.

“We spend weeks on Whiteout Weekend pre-production work, creating fun, dynamic videos with coaches and players to really entertain the viewers and put on a good broadcast,” Dobrow said. “The week of Whiteout I stay away from any other responsibilities, but now I had this Rokerthon video brewing in my head. We are Al Roker’s alma mater—I mean WTOP studios are named for him. This is a no-brainer. We have to submit a video.”

A team of staff and students brainstormed a variety of possible ideas and eventually landed on one that would showcase some of SUNY Oswego’s signature traits and strengths—cold weather, ice sports, a beautiful arena and a close-knit, fun-loving community. It was decided: SUNY Oswego would propose breaking the longest conga line on ice world record!

Initially, the team focused on creating a compelling one-minute video that would grab the attention of the NBC Today show producers who were selecting the winning campuses. They pulled together a group of students to demonstrate, on ice, how they would break the record. A cardboard cut-out of Roker even led the line.

“Will it be cold enough for us to conga on a frozen Lake Ontario or should we keep it indoors in our beautiful arena in the Marano Campus Center?” Dobrow asked in the video voice-over. “Come home to Oswego and give the weather forecast to let us know!”

Dobrow said he was very happy with the production quality of the submission, which included photos and footage from a variety of sources, including aerial footage shot by a drone with the assistance of campus videographer and Dobrow’s campus internship supervisor Jim Kearns.

Roker wasn’t involved in viewing the submissions or in choosing what campuses got selected, but he was happy to know that SUNY Oswego was well-represented.

“It was up to the producers and submissions that came in,” he said. “Oswego had one of the better submissions, and it just worked out. It was nice to see my alma mater represent itself so well. I don’t think I could be any prouder of the school than I already am.”

SUNY Oswego was the last stop—the grand finale—of a five-day trip to five colleges; the universities of Tennessee, Oklahoma, Loyola (Maryland) and Northern Michigan were the others selected to participate in Rokerthon 3.

When a Today show producer called Dobrow to let him know Oswego was a finalist, he wasted no time in dashing up to the seventh floor of Culkin Hall to inform President Deborah F. Stanley, who was featured in the submission video.

President Stanley mobilized the campus to ensure that the project received the support it needed to be successful. Now, the challenges of the record attempt became a reality.

Where would the campus find enough ice skates to equip the participants? How would the college recruit the 400 students needed to break the previous record of 353 set on Nov. 12, 2013, at the Ice Rink Canary Wharf in the United Kingdom? Would the college students who signed up actually wake up at 4 a.m. to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime event?

Indeed, they did!

On Friday morning, March 31, a total of 617 participants—nearly all students with a few faculty and staff members serving as team captains—passed through the turnstiles and swiped college IDs as adjudicators from Guinness counted each skater as he or she entered the ice.

Photo: Robert Clark ’78

Student choreographer and president of Del Sarte dance club Allison Anthony ’17 (left) raced around the ice to help the skaters with spacing and to get all the participants in sync with each other.

“I was really just trying to get everyone pumped up, helping them with the steps and reminding them not to let go of the person in front of them,” she said. “All week I had been dreaming of the conga and kept having a nightmare that the producers were going to make us do the steps in double time. But luckily they didn’t!”

Jim Russell ’83

Members of the men’s and women’s ice hockey teams, wearing their hockey jerseys and carrying large green and gold flags, and the Ice Effects synchronized figure skating team opened the Marano Campus Center rink for the record attempt as Roker came riding in on the Zamboni through a flurry of snowfall at center ice.

The conga line participants waited for their big moment, which came shortly after 8 a.m. They formed a serpentine line that wrapped around the edge of the ice and into the center. They skated in formation for five minutes before a crowd of hundreds of campus and community members to Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine’s “Conga.”

Seventeen volunteer referees, stationed throughout the arena, monitored skaters to ensure each one accurately performed the familiar conga step while their hands were connected to the waist of the skater in front.

After a few deductions for line breaks, Guinness adjudicator Michael Empric announced that SUNY Oswego had shattered the previous record with a new longest ice conga line total of 593 people.

“We are truly thankful and proud of the participation of so many from our campus community,” President Deborah F. Stanley said. “Our students seized the opportunity because they had pride we could do it, and a fantastic team contributed intensive planning, collaboration and coordination. We showed the nation that when SUNY Oswego sets out to accomplish something, we come together to get the job done!”

As much as Roker said he enjoyed riding the Zamboni and helping the mini-Zamboni “Tiny Tim” throw T-shirts into the crowd, he said the highlight for him was seeing the campus come together to achieve a common goal.

“Although it was not a horribly serious goal, it was fun, and it really showed the esprit de corps of the campus,” he said. “Everything really moved as smoothly as it possibly could have. It was very joyful for me—from start to finish.”

For many of the seniors involved, they said it capped off an incredible four years at Oswego.

Rane Prieto ’17 (above left), a public relations major who interned in the Office of Alumni Relations during the spring, said she was grateful to get an insider’s view into the planning and implementation of such a major event. She was part of the team of students who helped with the submission video and was part of the student crew who welcomed Roker at the Oswego County Airport on Thursday, March 30 (see related story on page 23).

“I have this calling to be an event planner, which my major public relations, has prepped me for,” said Prieto, who was enrolled in six classes and two internships during the spring semester. “Doing this event meant so much to me, and I learned a lot about crowd control, time management, how the timing of things doesn’t always go as planned and how unforeseen things sometimes happen. This was literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Despite being sleep-deprived and stressed from prepping for Del Sarte’s dance recital happening later in the day and being concerned that she might be late for her Quest presentation run-through with her professor at Rice Creek later that morning, Anthony said that nothing will compare to the feeling she had when the NBC producers handed her the framed Guinness record and invited her to do a victory lap around the 600 skaters who made it happen.

“Although I am not going into dancing or choreography, it is a passion of mine,” said Anthony, a zoology major who conducted field research this summer at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, N.Y. “It means so much to me that I was able to incorporate that passion into such a large-scale event and develop my leadership skills to help break a world record on national television. I can’t imagine a better way to end my four years at Oswego!”

Photo: Margaret Spillett

And for Dobrow, who represented the student body as part of the Rokerthon steering committee, the experience gave him a taste of what he hopes to do professionally someday. In the course of a few weeks, he attended more than 20 committee meetings—often serving as the college liaison with NBC—and he dedicated more than 100 hours to planning Rokerthon, while maintaining his full course load and leading WTOP.

“I love project management and hope to be a production coordinator someday,” said Dobrow, who accepted a position as lead operations coordinator at NBC Universal in July. “Rokerthon—the whole thing—is really project management—looking at facility needs, technical aspects, coordinating that many people on the ice for live TV and thinking of everything from the little gifts the people in the audience will receive to ensuring the Guinness rules are followed. Rokerthon gave me incredible experience doing that.

“I’d wake up and think, ‘Is this really happening?’” he said. “A student submitted a video and it was accepted and the Today show came here and gave us over 17 minutes of national air time. Are you kidding me? Now, the nation knows that SUNY Oswego has a great community; great alumni like Al Roker; great faculty, staff and students who come together to support each other and to do this. This was definitely the best way I could have ended my senior year at Oswego. Just thinking about it gets me all fired up! I love this place!”

Fringe Benefits of Rokerthon

Photo: Jennifer Broderick

Although the highlight of Rokerthon 3 was the on-air breaking of a world record, the arrival of Al Roker ’76 and the NBC crew on Thursday, March 30, created waves of excitement across campus.

A team of students, equipped with a wooden yellow brick road, signs and banners, musical instruments and pom-poms, headed to the Oswego County Airport to give Roker and his team a proper welcome home. Music students played “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” as Roker in his favorite Oswego gear emerged from the Rokerthon jet repeating, “There’s No Place Like Home!”

Once back on campus, he surprised a few prospective students and their families by leading their Admissions Tour around campus (above). (Both students decided to attend Oswego after their star-studded tour.) Then Roker dropped into a meteorology class in the Shineman Center for Science, Engineering and Innovation, but he was happy to learn that among the students in class was his former professor and the founding dean of the School of Communication, Media and the Arts Fritz Messere ’71 M’76.

Roker chatted on-air at the WNYO radio station, popped into WTOP-10 and the Al Roker ’76 Television Studio, visited Littlepage Dining Hall where he worked as a student, swung by his old residence hall room in Onondaga Hall and stopped by the open skate rehearsal to give a pep talk to the students practicing the conga on ice. Roker’s presence on campus created a wave of excitement that built toward the setting of a world record the next day.

Student interns were even assigned to the NBC production team to assist with all kinds of tasks while the crew was on campus. They were leaders of student media organizations: Ian Dwyer ’17, Matthew Raynor ’17, Nick Costanzo ’18, JoAnn DeLauter ’17, Justin Penman ’18and Melissa Wilson ’17.

After the record was broken Friday, President Deborah F. Stanley and Roker presented two lucky student skaters with a $5,000 check: PurePoint Financial provided the scholarship to Emily Notaro ’17and the Oswego College Foundation funded the scholarship for Jasmine Gomez ’19.

And it was while studying the details that vertebrate paleontologist Dr. Frank Varriale ’97 made a key discovery in dinosaur jaw mechanics: Jaws of the ceratopsian dinosaurs moved forward and backward as well as up and down.

Using casts of the fossils of the horned, plant-eating dinosaurs, Dr. Varriale used a scanning electron microscope to scrutinize all the tiny bits of evidence of wear-and-tear to the teeth as the dinosaur chewed. The length, width, location and shape of these microwears helped Dr. Varriale determine a lot about the dinosaur–the food it ate and how it chewed, and the ultimate clue to his ground-breaking discovery: the shape of the damage lines on teeth. His article, “Dental microwear reveals mammal-like chewing in the neoceratopsian dinosaur ‘Leptoceratops gracilis,’” was published in July 2016 in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ.

As part of his research, Dr. Varriale traveled to several national and international museums to examine ceratopsian teeth, including the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.; Beijing Natural History Museum; Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in Ulaanbaatar; and the Palaeozoological Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

He has been an assistant professor of biology at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., since 2012. He was awarded the Alfred Sherwood Romer Prize from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology for his research that resulted a revolutionary discovery of chewing in horned dinosaurs (ceratopsians). Dr. Varriale earned a master’s in paleontology from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and a doctorate at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the university’s Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution.

Varriale teaches a variety of courses, including evolution and diversity, comparative vertebrate anatomy, earth science, anatomy and physiology, and a new dinosaurs course for non-majors in spring 2017.

An interview with Dr. Varriale

Why did you choose zoology as a start to your career as a vertebrate paleontologist?

The choice was quite simple: I’ve always had a passion for paleontology, specifically the branch of vertebrate paleontology involved with the study of dinosaurs, their biology and ecology. The logical place to start an undergraduate career in paleontology is either the disciplines of geology or biology. When I began my career, Oswego was the only school in the SUNY system that offered a B.S. in zoology. Much of our understanding of behavior, biology and function of dinosaurs comes from comparison of extinct animals with living close relatives or analogues, making zoology an excellent place to start when trying to build a foundation of knowledge on which to study extinct animals.

Readers (well, people in general) are fascinated by your career. Can you share an anecdote that illustrates what your job is like?

Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of my career is the “eureka moment” of scientific discovery. That moment when you understand how something works, and that what you’ve discovered is entirely new knowledge that was unknown to humanity before that moment. This is certainly not a phenomenon limited to my discipline, but it is an experience that scientists derive great joy from. My moment came when I was looking at teeth of horned dinosaurs (ceratopsians) using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). I was in a room on the basement floor of the physiology building at Johns Hopkins University. The room was dark so that you could more easily see the monitor of the SEM. I had viewed several teeth from the lower jaw of a medium-sized ceratopsian known as Leptoceratops when I had noticed wear on the teeth that was unlike the pits and scratches I had seen on other ceratopsians. From this, a suspicion grew in my mind about the way this animal was moving its lower jaw when chewing, and I made several predictions about what the wear should look like on the upper teeth once I started to examine them. When it came time to view the upper teeth, the pattern I had predicted was present, and in that moment I realized I had found a new behavior significant to the evolution of these dinosaurs, one that had not been discovered before. I was so excited I wanted to share the moment with someone who would appreciate its significance. My advisor, being the only other dinosaur paleontologist present in the vast sea of medical professionals at Hopkins Medical School, fit the bill. His research is also founded on understanding the evolution of chewing in duck-billed dinosaurs and their relatives, so I knew he would immediately appreciate the discovery. I flung myself out of the room and tore through several other buildings to get to him and tell him what I had found. Eureka!

What was the value of SUNY Oswego’s program to your career?

The immediate value of the zoology program at Oswego was the opportunity to receive an education that was more specialized toward my career goals. Courses founded on the diversity, evolution, behavior, structure and function of living back-boned animals. I have used this foundation throughout my career as a paleontologist.

During my time at Oswego, professors Peter Weber and Al Lackey recognized my passion for paleontology and provided career advice that I otherwise would not have known to seek out. Their door was always open, and I often found myself spending time in their offices discussing evolution, dinosaurs and my career. As busy as their lives were, they certainly weren’t required to do this, but now as a professor I see that they were just as rewarded by encouraging a budding young scientist as that pupil was to sit in their presence and be edified. Their outgoing investments in me led me to take as many courses taught by them as I could. Their teaching style was rigorous, their expectations high, and I often find myself emulating aspects of their technique in my own courses. To this day, their wisdom is still being passed on, as I was recently discussing with one of my top students the rewards of lifelong learning that Peter imparted to me over 20 years ago.

]]>http://magazine.oswego.edu/2017/08/28/suny-oswego-zoology-alumnus-recognized-for-dinosaur-discovery/feed/09143Alumnus Shares ‘Passion and Purpose’ through Campaign Launchhttp://magazine.oswego.edu/2016/11/29/alumnus-shares-passion-and-purpose-through-campaign-launch/
http://magazine.oswego.edu/2016/11/29/alumnus-shares-passion-and-purpose-through-campaign-launch/#respondTue, 29 Nov 2016 20:53:31 +0000http://oswegomagazine.wpengine.com/?p=8709It’s hard to believe that just two years ago I was working at WTOP and getting ready for another season of Laker hockey. I was fortunate during my senior year at SUNY Oswego to wear hats such as WTOP General Manager and Communications Intern with the Alumni and Development Office. Who would’ve ever imagined that both those positions would help me get to where I am today?

About midway through my internship, beginning of April 2014, I was invited into a meeting with then Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations Kerry Casey Dorsey ’81 and Campaign Manager Melissa Manwaring ’01. They explained and showed me plans they were working on to launch With Passion and Purpose with a television show that would have a studio audience and broadcast to the greater SUNY Oswego community online. I walked out of the meeting with ideas of what it would take to make the show work from a technical standpoint, who we could feature from the SUNY Oswego campus, and probably the biggest thought: I’ve got a job before I graduate. This was a lot to take in all at once. I knew I would need some help, beyond the amazing resources available through Alumni and Development, so I asked and was allowed to hire Blaise Hill ’14 as my intern.

From June 1 to October 16, 2014, Blaise, Melissa, Kerry, MJ Herson and I worked on every part of the show; we gathered video from virtually every school on campus, lined up guests to appear live during the show, designed the stage and lights, etc. We would not have been able to accomplish these tasks without the help of our Alumni and Development Office, the President’s Office, schools on campus, CTS and Patrick Moochler who helped us get connected with Time Warner Cable Sports (who provided the production truck for the live broadcast).

We had six months from conception of idea to day of broadcast. We worked on the show up until hours before we went live. There are a lot of great stories that we all could tell from this experience, and I’m always willing to share.

SUNY Oswego made it possible for me, and continues to make it possible for current and former students, to succeed. I could not have imagined starting my career anywhere else, and I’m honored that I was chosen to produce The Tomorrow Show, which is proving to be so important for future endowment opportunities with SUNY Oswego. Kerry and Melissa, thank you for trusting me and believing that the instruction I was given during my Oswego tenure could help launch a campaign. You reinvested in SUNY Oswego’s education by placing your faith in me!

Matthew Bishop ’14 is a graduate of SUNY Oswego who produced and directed The
Tomorrow Show to launch the With Passion and Purpose: The Campaign for SUNY Oswego. He now resides in Buffalo, N.Y., and directs the morning news at WKBW 7 Eyewitness News.

The winemaker shared his experiences – and some memories of SUNY Oswego – in an interview in 2016.

How did you and Dana meet?

Richard Woolley: Dana and I met in Oswego at a Sigma Tau Chi fraternity party in late September 1986. Long story short, we ended up later that evening at The Woodshed, then had our first kiss on the corner in front of Bucklands. From there, it’s been an amazing 30 years.

How did you get involved in winemaking?

Richard Woolley: Our interest in winemaking grew out of a passion for seeking out wineries all around the United States. Of course in the early years, just after college, what could a young couple with no kids or a boat do for fun in Central New York that did not cost an arm and a leg? Go camping in the Finger Lakes region and visit wineries, which in those days rarely ever charged a tasting fee. Camping was $6 a night and free wine – it was pretty much a winning combination!

That was the start, but before too many years passed, my job as a meteorologist found us chasing a weather job as a civilian contractor for the U.S. Army in Utah. I was monitoring the weather around a chemical weapons storage and disposal site. Not much wine there, but one heck of a world removed from Oswego! However, they do have lake effect snow there off the Great Salt Lake, and, of course, purely by accident we moved into one of the areas that frequently got buried.

Another job change brought us back east to Pennsylvania, and one Christmas Dana bought me a wine making kit. So one day in January or February of 2001 I started the kit by following the instructions and making my first wine. I bottled it all up nice and, proud of myself, I placed it in the cellar to age, promising not to drink it for at least six months. Well as luck would have it, another job change came to go out west again and do weather forecasting for wildland fires in the Southwest for the National Park Service. As the moving truck arrived the driver informed us that the wine couldn’t go. Who knew that moving companies will not transport wine?

I was already in Albuquerque, so Dana approached a neighbor/friend and left them a parting gift of two cases of wine and told them, “This is Rich’s first try at it so don’t be too surprised if it’s not very good.”

Almost a year passed and one day we got a call from the old neighbor who was just finishing off the wine we gave them. She thanked us, saying it was some of the best wine they ever had. I shucked it off as a fluke. About the same time we figured out that there were wineries in New Mexico, quite a few, but instead of going to visit each one, they all came to Albuquerque or Santa Fe once a year and for a few bucks you could taste them all without having to drive. Score!

Then it was time for another job change. This time I was the boss of the Great Basin Fire Weather Program in Reno, Nevada. There are no wineries or vineyards in Reno, but we soon discovered that a short drive over the hill (Sierra Nevadas) put us right in the middle of spectacularly beautiful Old Vine Zinfandel country southeast of Sacramento in the foothills. Let’s just say we went over the hill an awful lot those years, tasting new wines, ports, champagnes and different styles of the same wine. Tastings were still mostly free; we were, after all, nowhere near Napa and Sonoma.

Another job change brought us back to the East Coast and into the Allentown area of Pennsylvania. No wine here, we thought. But it turns out, that’s not quite true. There were wineries making mostly sweet “eastern” style wines. One day we found Blair Vineyards driving home from a trip someplace. We saw the sign, and, of course, Dana suggested we stop. Blair Vineyards made wines like those that we remembered from the west: dry, full of flavor and body with subtle hints of fruit and a complexity that is missing in most eastern wines. It was during one of those lazy weekend days over a Pinot Noir that we discussed someday owning a winery might be a great second career.

We had become good friends with Rich Blair, the owner of Blair Vineyards, and told him of our dreams, but like anyone who actually owns a winery you hear that a lot knowing it will never happen.

All along I was making wine each fall and I then discovered I could also make wine in the spring with grapes from Chile. Before long, we had a fully stocked wine cellar, and I was giving some away to the neighbors.

At about this time our oldest was heading off to college and the youngest was about to hit high school and we began to look at our future, wondering. It wouldn’t be long before we were empty nesters. We took a trip up to the Finger Lakes for the first time in 20 years for a long weekend of camping, wine tasting (we had our own designated driver), stopping at our favorite wineries from so long ago and some new ones, too. We saw the results of what 20 years did to the wine industry of the Finger Lakes; it had grown up from family-run farm operations to big time successful businesses. Dana and I knew immediately that eastern Pennsylvania was just like the Finger Lakes 20 years ago. We went home and began searching for land, and after almost a year of searching we bought 13 acres and became farmers. It was about that same time we looked at each other and decided it was time to go all in and take a once in a lifetime chance. We sold the house we had been living in, cashed in some minor stock holdings and other assets and began planning our new life at the vineyard.

Like any good farmer/winery owner we planted 3,000 vines first, then got a tractor, then built a barn and lived out of boxes in a tiny apartment for the winter of 2013-2014. Finally in the spring after planning all winter we began house construction, thinking, “Hey, what could go wrong?” That was the year real winters decided to return to the eastern U.S., and we hit -15F one night. Bye-bye little grape vines. Nearly 2/3rds died over that winter. All that work was gone in one night.

We planned to buy grapes anyway so the winery dream lived on, and with the help of the folks at Blair Vineyards, we produced about 450 cases of wine in 2014 and got ready to open the winery — if only we could get the electricity turned on! Finally by late September 2014 we got electricity to the winery and did a very soft opening just to kick the tires. A few people came by to see, but they were mostly neighbors. We had announced our official grand opening a few weeks later. The local paper did a little story on us and shot a few pictures, but little did we realize what they would do for us, we became the feature story that weekend.

Grand opening arrived Columbus Day Weekend, and after a brief prayer the night before hoping that someone would show up, we were delighted to see spectacular weather. Before we knew it there were literally hundreds of people at our door both days and Weathered Vineyards was born!

How does meteorology play into owning/operating a winery?

Richard Woolley: For us, the weather is crucial for every aspect. Obviously, the farming is weather dependent: when to spray, prune, pull leaves, harvest, etc. are all driven by the weather and what the weather forecast tells us.

Little did we know how important weather is with everything else, too. Are the customers going to show up? Will the musical act have good weather to be outside? The weather even impacts winemaking decisions. For example, we need cold weather during the winter to help stabilize the wines; since we are small, we don’t use refrigeration like they do in California. We let Mother Nature work for us. A couple weeks in the 20s and presto, it’s done for free.

Is this a family operation?

Richard Woolley: This is a first generation family-owned winery. Most wineries usually are when they first get started, and if successful the second generation and beyond reap the greatest rewards. I like to joke that the winery is my nights, weekends and holiday job to go along with my regular day job running a private long range weather forecasting company.

Can you shed light on a typical day running a winery?

Richard Woolley: A typical day is tough to describe, for it’s never the same. Some days it’s doing chemistry testing of the wines as they age, checking sulfites, acidity, pH, etc. One day I may be pumping barrels out, washing the barrel and pumping the wine back in. Another day may be bottling the wine, yet another involves working in the vineyard spraying.

More fun in the vineyard may include suckering the vines, leaf pulling, shoot positioning, raising the catch wires, or just simply mowing the grass, which everyone seems to want to do (and why not? The tractor does have an air conditioned cab and radio and a drink holder!). Late in the year it;s all about protecting the fruit from birds, my most hated enemy; and deer. They seem to love a big helping of grapes the day before we pick. My neighbors think I am nuts when I go running out of the house screaming like a madman at the birds to scare them away, but trust me we can have a flock of thousands show up.

Other days at the winery may involve setting up tables or seating for events, stocking the shelves, because running a winery for our guests is really all about “winertainment.” But sometimes there are just those nice days when the weather is beautiful with a few clouds and a breeze, not too hot or cold, and you can sit back enjoy a glass of wine and watch the weather go by in silence.

How did Oswego prepare you to take on an operation that runs the gamut from agricultural to scientific, to marketing to distribution and sales?

Richard Woolley: This is where Dana and I split duties. My classes at Oswego were obviously useful for the technical nuts and bolts weather part and the chemistry. But there is also a more holistic part of it as well, which allows me to see a bigger picture sometimes. It helps to be familiar with the difference between an advection freeze versus a radiation frost event and how it applies to grape growing. Things such as, it’s coldest before the sunrise, or that during the growing season a southeast facing slope will receive direct morning sunshine but more indirect late afternoon sunshine resulting in more growing degree days while at the same time increasing the temperature and lowering humidity quickly in the morning but at the same time keeping the grapes from boiling in the late hot afternoon sun. I can understand how the equipment works and why it reads or calculates what it does and at the same time I can tell when a reading doesn’t make any sense.

Dana, on the other hand, is the marketing and sales person, which is where her communication degree comes in handy. Event planning is another one of Dana’s skills. She is the one who designed our logo and label design for the bottles. It was her suggestion to do something unconventional both in shape and color and it works. At least several times a month someone comes into the winery and comments about how they love the label design and the paint colors in the winery — dark purple on one wall and saffron yellow on the other walls and ceiling.

We have come up with some very unique events that we are now seeing being held at other local wineries. Coming up with new and interesting events is vital to us growing as well as connecting with our current customers and attracting new customers on social media and on our website. Dana maintains the website, Facebook and other social media tools.

Back in your Oswego days, what was your drink of choice? What is it now?

Richard Woolley: Beer for me, heck we met over a keg. But beer fills you up and liquor gets you drunk so my tastes evolved to wine. First, it was sweet white wines, and now it’s dry, big red wines. My favorite currently is Cabernet Franc.

What are the top five things people should consider when selecting wine?

Richard Woolley:
What is the wine’s purpose? (To drink by itself or to pair with food?)
Who made the wine? (Every winery has a style.)
What is the age of the wine? (Cabernet Sauvignon should be at least 5 years old before consuming. Riesling maybe less than a year.)
What is the price? (Most people unless they are real wine snobs cannot tell the difference between a $30 bottle of wine and $100. However, wine which is less than $10 probably is mass produced and often employs ‘shortcuts’ to get to the finished product.)
The taste! (Have you ever had this wine before and did you like it? Because in the end it doesn’t matter how much it costs, what you serve it with, who made it or the price if you end up pouring it down the drain!)